Holistic Admissions for Graduate Students at Virginia Tech
The graduate admission process recognizes indicators of potential academic success beyond the typical GPA, GRE scores (or other standardized test scores) and reputation of the university of prior enrollment. The Graduate School application process allows applicants to provide additional educational experiences for consideration in admissions, such as:
- community involvement and/or service
- leadership
- overcoming social, economic and/or physical barriers
- personal and/or professional ethics
- recognition of achievements over time
- research and scholarship
In alignment with the personal attributes critical to academic success studied intensively by Educational Testing Services in its development of the Personal Potential Index (PPI), we modified the letter of recommendation form to include specific questions about the following:
- communication skills
- ethics and integrity
- initiative
- innovation and creativity
- planning and organization
- teamwork
Letter writers are asked to evaluate the applicant on these attributes and then provide a brief statement about the most compelling reason to admit the candidate. Full letters of recommendation are still to be submitted.
The application and the letter of recommendation forms were built in such a fashion that departments/programs can “sort” by the additional educational experiences and personal attributes as well as GPA and other measures. Admission committees are encouraged to use these experiences and attributes systematically in determining qualified candidates and not just “sort” by high GPA and high GREs. Specifically, department are asked to “sort” initially and then revisit the applicant pool to “sort” at least two more times to expand the pool by the addition of those who were rated high on the pertinent additional educational experiences and personal attributes of value for academic success.
See the short video below for more information about the Holistic Admissions process:
